Conventional residential and commercial oven appliances generally include a cabinet that defines a cooking chamber for receipt of food items for cooking. Multiple heating elements are positioned within the cooking chamber to provide heat to food items located therein. The heating elements can include, for example, radiant heating elements, such as a bake heating assembly positioned at a bottom of the cooking chamber and/or a separate broiler heating assembly positioned at a top of the cooking chamber.
Notably, it is desirable to provide a camera for generating images of food during a cooking process, e.g., for monitoring cooking progress. However, due to thermal operating limits of cameras, cameras are typically only used in ovens having relatively low peak operating temperatures. Thus, cameras are typically not suitable for use in ovens which include a self-cleaning mode of operation where the cooking chamber is heated to very high temperature, e.g., greater than 800° F., in order to burn off food spills and clean the cooking chamber. Conventional ovens that operate at such high temperatures and include oven cameras frequently require complex and costly cooling systems to maintain the camera temperatures within the desired operating range.
Accordingly, an oven appliance that includes an improved camera assembly would be useful. More particularly, an oven appliance with a camera assembly that provides improved visibility and is not damaged when the oven operates at very high temperatures associated with a self-cleaning mode of operation would be particularly beneficial.